The smell of gas spreads through the air once darkness falls on the Chechen
capital, as fires burn to offer some light in a city where electricity is rarely
provided.

Not that there is much for the light to illuminate: buildings riddled with
gunfire, many reduced to rubble, fallen victims whose remains stand as a
testament to the two wars that have decimated the southern Russian republic
since 1994.

Around one million people lived in the once vibrant capital when the first
conflict between federal forces and separatist rebels broke out, and rights
groups contest Russian estimates that some 600,000 people are currently living
in the shelled-out city.

In daytime, Grozny seems to belong to another century. Lying on a steppe
between the high Caucasus mountains that enclose the republic, it is often
swathed in a thick, yellow low-lying fog. There is barely a soul to be seen, and
those who do venture onto the streets are usually women, some returning from the
markets that have sprung up as residents attempt to return to normal life.

"I sit at home all day," said Vaxa Astan, who lives in a temporary
housing center for the many Chechen refugees who returned last summer from tent
camps in the neighboring republic of Ingushetia.

"I don't work and there's nothing to do," he said. "It's not
safe outside."

Officials in Grozny and Moscow have been attempting to prove otherwise,
firstly by closing down the Ingush tent camps in a bid to urge -- some say force
-- the refugees to return home.

And most recently, with plans to hold a referendum on March 23 in which
Chechens are expected to approve a constitution that would formally set their
republic's place within Russia and give up any claim to independence.

Rights groups have widely criticized the plan, touted by President Vladimir
Putin as proof that Moscow has launched a political solution to a conflict which
continues to claim lives on both sides almost daily.

"We cannot speak about 100 percent security in our republic -- but
neither can any other country in the world," said Akhmad Kadyrov, head of
the pro-Russian administration in Chechnya.

Yet civilians living among the tattered ruins of Grozny say they can barely
speak of any security at all, and nearly everyone has a story about disappearing
friends or relatives, picked up by Russian soldiers attempting to weed out
separatist rebels. Many of the men are never heard from again.

"There is absolutely nothing here, everything is destroyed," said
Petimak Khumeva, 53, who lives in the temporary housing center with her seven
daughters and said two of her nephews disappeared in such
"cleaning-up" operations.

Petimak returned to Grozny from an Ingush camp seven months ago at the
request of her ill husband, who died in the center's dark halls three weeks ago.

"The Russian soldiers take our kids, they beat them and kill them,"
she said. "We need the world to come and help us -- not these Russian
soldiers everywhere."

About 80,000 Russian troops are currently stationed in Chechnya, a tiny
republic just 80 kilometers (50 miles) wide and 160 kilometers long -- roughly
the size of the US state of Connecticut or half the size of Belgium.

They were sent into Chechnya in October 1999, after a series of apartment
bombings in Moscow and southern Russia blamed on Chechen rebels and have been
fighting a separatist insurgency ever since.

The overwhelming sentiment in Grozny is one of fatigue -- tired troops and
tired civilians, who say they will vote in the March 23 referendum because they
are willing to take part in any process that could put an end to the drawn-out
war.

"Of course I will vote -- we want to live," Petimak said.
"We're tired of this."